Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Most New Yorkers say the state is headed in the right direction, according to the latest Siena College poll. Of the voters surveyed, 55 percent said New York is on the right track--the highest percentage to say so in the seven-year history of Siena polls.

Monday, April 09, 2012

A little noticed, relatively inexpensive item in New York's massive state budget could be a life saver. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature found $1 million in a nearly flat budget to change the way buses are inspected in New York following a bloody year on the road.

Thursday, April 05, 2012

More than 20 people, including City Council members, half a dozen labor leaders, representatives from Housing Development and Preservation, the Consul General of Mexico in New York, an unpaid Mexican building worker, a representative from the immigrant advocate group Make The Road, and several other Comptroller office staffers filed in behind a podium, flanking Comptroller Liu on both sides.

Thursday, April 05, 2012

Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is in solid shape for her re-election campaign, which reported $9.1 million on hand. At the same time polls show that New York's junior senator currently leads in match-ups against her possible GOP challengers.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has retained his former top aide's new law firm for the court fight over the proposed addition of a state Senate seat. The Senate and Assembly majorities have also retained private lawyers.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

The contest between Republican David Storobin and Democratic City Councilman Lew Fidler — now more than two weeks after the March 20 special election to fill the seat vacated by disgraced former state Senator Carl Kruger — got both a little closer and a little further away from a final resolution on Wednesday.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

In the latest Quinnipiac poll of New York voters, Governor Andrew Cuomo continues his stratospheric approval streak, with 68 percent of those polled approving of the way Cuomo is doing his job. He was one point shy of his all-time ...

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Standing on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday, City Councilman Dan Garodnick of the Upper East Side spoke with reporters about his recently launched campaign for city comptroller. Very recently launched, in fact: an announcement shortly after 6 a.m. that morning had officially kicked off what ...

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

The Democratic candidates vying for their party’s spot on the ballot out in the 6th Congressional district have been slinging around fundraising figures over the past week. On Tuesday, Assemblywoman Grace Meng’s campaign says she’s come out on top.

According to an email from her spokesperson, Meng’s campaign has $300,000 ...

Monday, April 02, 2012

Assemblyman Rory Lancman continued to line up labor support today, in his quest to be the Democratic Party nomination in the new 6th Congressional district in Queens. On Monday, the Working Families Party announced its support for Lancman in his primary race against fellow Democrats Assemblywoman Grace Meng and City ...

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos on the budget agreement and his priorities for the rest of session.

Tim Kremer of the New York State School Boards Association checks in.

Senator Pat Gallivan of Western New York discusses both school aid and his bill on the Scaffold Law.

Governor Andrew Cuomo took a moment to applaud the $22 million Adirondack Club & Resort deal in the Town of Tupper Lake during a conference call on Wednesday. But not everyone is a fan of the deal. Today we will be joined by attorney Bob Glennon of Protect the Adirondacks and Charlie Morrison of the Sierra Club. They are suing the Adirondack Park Agency (which they say has “become a rogue agency”), the DEC and the developer of the Adirondack Club and Resort.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

As he previewed in his January State of the State address, Governor Andrew Cuomo got his infrastructure bank this week after finalizing the state budget earlier this week.

The "New York Works" plan would use $232 million in capital funds and $917 million in new federal funds for a total of $1.2 billion in new spending. That funding would, in turn, leverage private resources to inject $15 billion into infrastructure spending.

In the past year, infrastructure spending has gone out of of favor, particularly among Republicans. Governors Chris Christie in New Jersey, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and Rick Scott in Florida all killed big rail projects, and Republicans in Congress have balked at passing a surface transportation bill, which runs out at the end of this month.

So it’s notable that Governor Cuomo sees infrastructure spending as part of his ticket to electoral success. His email describes New York Works “as a new and smarter strategy for putting New Yorkers back to work by rebuilding our aging infrastructure and helping put our state’s economy back on track.”

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Economic development is the centerpiece of the newly agreed-upon budget. Governor Andrew Cuomo will discuss some of the plans with us on the show.

Then, reaction to the budget agreement.

We begin with Stephen Acquarioof the New York State Association of Counties on the Governor’s plans for mandate relief and a state takeover of Medicaid.

There is new money in the budget as well as a new 3-year Foreclosure Prevention plan that Kirsten Keefe of the Empire Justice Center will have details about.

Not everyone is pleased with the plan – advocates for education like Billy Easton of the Alliance for Quality Education say policies in Albany are making educating our children less effective rather than more.

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